EU fines Qualcomm for abuse of dominant market position

The European Commission has fined Qualcomm â‚¬997m for abusing its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets. Qualcomm prevented rivals from competing in the market by making significant payments to a key customer on condition it would not buy from rivals. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.

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Qualcomm is scum and manipulating the patent system to extract unjustified royalties. It is sickening that gatekeeper patents can be used to extract tens of billions in royalties.

What is a gatekeeper patent? The poster child for a gatekeeper patent is the Microsoft FAT32 patent. That was about three hours of work that has resulted in $20B in royalties being paid. That patent allows a useless piece of technology to control access to Windows compatibility.

What is a gatekeeper patent? The poster child for a gatekeeper patent is the Microsoft FAT32 patent. That was about three hours of work that has resulted in $20B in royalties being paid. That patent allows a useless piece of technology to control access to Windows compatibility.

You’re getting your patents confused – the FAT32 patent was only ever leveraged against TomTom. The Linux VFAT driver was quickly changed to avoid the patent (Which was for storing short and long filenames together)

The patents that Microsoft receives money from from Android vendors is on the exFAT driver, and that is because exFAT support is required for SDXC support, and is only one of the technologies you’re licensing with that $5-$15 licensing fee for SDXC

While I disagree with software patents in principle, the patents for exFAT at least are significantly more complex than the simple “gatekeeper” patent situation you described.

Although the two things nej_simon mentions aren’t related, they are both a display of the unjustice that riddles Europe when it comes to big corps breaking the law:

1. VWAG should have been fined instead of just having given two years to implement a fix, which equates to a VERY gentle slap on the hands when you look at what they actually and wilfully did wrong.

2. The EURO 6 emissions standard enforcement has been whittled down to give car manufacturers the chance to violate that emissions standard wich a much forgiving factor without having to fear repercussions, thus granting them the legal right to continue poisoning the air in Europe.